Studies in the History of Sanskrit Poetics v2.c85.51

v2.c85.51

To most of the writers who followed in the footsteps of Mammaṭa and Ruyyaka, there was hardly any original work that seemed left or unaccomplished. The details of the new system having already been established, there was apparently no occasion for any creative work, and even the task of critical elaboration had well-nigh run its course. Nor did any of the writers possess the genius of making an entirely new departure. This was also the period of the early Muhammadan incursions, and was marked, as was to be expected, by a general decadence of all investigations, reflecting a corresponding ebb in the tide of intellectual, as well as social and political, activity. In the centuries that follow there arose a host of commentators, Mammaṭa alone claiming more than fifty, who busied themselves in interpreting the already established rules and in adding here and there minor points of detail, not clearly made out by their predecessors. The task of remodelling and presenting the new theory in an easier style was also undertaken, giving birth to works like the *Ekāvalī* of Vidyādhara and the *Pratāpa-rudra-yaśo-bhūṣaṇa* of Vidyānātha, the chief merit of which consisted in systematic compilation and arrangement. On the main problems, these treatises and even the later works of Jayadeva and Appayya Dīkṣita, which carry in particular the process of analysing the poetic figures to its utmost limits, throw little valuable light.